What I Won't Be Playing at Pro Tour RtR

About Elias Watsfeldt

Elias is a Gold level player from Sweden, who
started playing Magic in 2003 alongside most people in his school class. He
generally prefers to play control decks, both in Limited
and Constructed. Some of his accomplishments include:

Gold Pro Player

44 Lifetime Pro Points

4th GP Ghent 2012

5th GP San Diego 2011

Top 16 GP Gothenburg 2010

30th Worlds 2011

20 PTQ Top8s (2 wins)

What I Won't Be Playing at Pro Tour RtR

Greetings
fellow planeswalkers.

This is my
first attempt to compose a Magic-related article and I will try my best to make
it both readable and comprehensible. I will try to include a brief introduction
in my next article, provided this reaches a certain level of expectation.
Today's focus will be laid at, as the title implies, two Modern decks (at least
one being cool).

The first
deck I would like to share with you is capable of practicing some dark magic.
Imagine yourself playing one of the normal decks in the format, a deck which
contains cards such as Path to Exile and Lightning Bolt to deal with opposing
threats. You are then to imagine an average hand, containing threats in the form
of Delver of Secrets and Snapcaster Mage, combined with Lightning Bolt and Path to Exile as disruption. For the sake of the argument, let us even presume your
top card is Geist of Saint Traft. That hand is perfectly fine, well positioned
against almost any deck you might face.

At first,
the deck seemed to be the real deal so we wanted to give the deck a real
challenge. We took a normal Jund deck, switched the Lightning Bolts and, if I
remember correctly, Kitchen Finks for a combination of Jund Charm, Seal of Primordium and Thoughtseize, not to mention the four Abrupt Decays already in
the maindeck. As expected, the matchup could not really get any worse, and
winning proved difficult. Unfortunately, this is something that will happen
over and over again. For reference, Cedric Phillips' Jund sideboard taken from
the latest available daily event:

The single
fact that you most likely would lose against Jund, perhaps the most played deck
at PT Return to Ravnica, almost single-handedly dismisses the deck. Now don't
get me wrong, this deck is lots of fun to play, and, if you were to swap Hallowed Fountain for Adarkar Wastes, it is very affordable indeed. Despite a
tough, ok... terrible postboard matchup against Jund, this is still a very
powerful deck! Most decks are not designed to deal with a hexproof creature powered
up with a Daybreak Coronet. Or double Ethereal Armor into Rancor. I would
encourage people to try this out on Magic Online. Even though I did mention a
lot of reasons not to play the deck, the fact that back-to-back Pro Tour Top8er
Denniz Rachid had "The Bogleman" as his #1 choice for quite some time
remains.

Lastly, a
short look at the few unorthodox cards/choices in "The Bogleman".

16
Creatures:

Since you
only need one creature to win the game, a case could be made to go down to, say
12 of them. Though, there are a few reasons for playing every single good
hexproof creature available. The main reason would be Liliana of the Veil,
since with only one creature you are stone cold dead to Liliana. Secondly,
drawing multiple creatures is not that bad. The second, or third, can also carry
auras and stay on defense, or maybe jump in front of Tarmogoyf before dying.

I imagine
this card to be quite good against the resurging Valakut. If you have a Daybreak Coronet attached to one of your creatures, most Valakut decks will
have a hard time killing you after going off once.

The last
deck I would like to share with you is just another take on an already
established deck.

"Perfection
is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing
left to take away."

The main
differences between this version and the already existing ones are the addition
of Deathrite Shaman and the lack of two mana spells. This deck has effectively
38 one mana spells. 38! For comparison, the latest available Magic Online list
contains nine two mana spells. To mention the obvious, that is nine more than
this deck has.

Without
further ado, I would like to share my views on the different parts of the deck.
The following cards are not to be cut from the deck, not under any
circumstances. The Swedish mono red master, Per Nyström, describes the deck as
a seven card combo, containing only combo pieces. I believe that to be a rather
fair description of what the deck is trying to do and the following cards are
strictly better than the other options available.

A case
could be made for exchanging Mogg Fanatic for Keldon Marauders, but there are
two strong reasons not to make that swap. The first is that Mogg Fanatic costs
one mana, which actually is a big deal. In some games you will be stuck on two
lands the entire game, and therefore wanting to cast two spells per turn. The
other, and perhaps more flagrant argument, is Spell Snare. By not having any
two drops whatsoever, you are immune to Spell Snare, which is a big deal indeed
against Tzu Ching Kuo's UW deck from the World Magic Cup. If Spell Snare sees
less play, maybe it is correct to play a couple of Keldon Marauders. Regarding Pillar of Flame, all I can say, is that it is the best Shock available, and
that Shock is slightly better in a creature defined format than the creature
based options.

Deathrite Shaman and Grim Lavamancer fit perfectly in this deck. Not only does the deck
contain 10 fetch lands, but it also contains 38 one mana spells. If either are
left untouched against a creature based deck, they will gradually take over the
game. I would say that Deathrite Shaman is the better one, since it can
accelerate and mess with your opponent’s graveyard. That is very relevant
against Snapcaster Mage, Life from the Loam, Kitchen Finks, Tarmogoyf and
potentially Jarad's Orders. The acceleration part makes Blood Moon maindeckable
and gives you an out in case you take a couple of mulligans. Turn two Blood Moon seems very powerful in the format, and not many decks can win against that
opening on the draw.

The
sideboard is pretty standard. Playing a combo deck, you don't have too many
cards to bring out, so you can have very specific options in your sideboard. Smash to Smithereens is there for affinity or other decks you might face
containing artifacts, whereas Tunnel Ignus is there for any Scapeshift deck
roaming around. Ensnaring Bridge and Searing Blaze are of course there for
decks leaning on creatures to win the game.

However, I
will not be playing the deck at the Pro Tour, mainly because I have a better
option available. Though I would not be surprised if I end up sleeving up Shard Volley for GP Lyon in about a month. There is nothing like burning your
opponent for three on turn one!

That is all
from me for today. I sincerely hope you got this far without any nausea.

Comments

Anonymous

Tue, 10/16/2012 - 11:41

Good article! I really like the idea of showing and talking about decks you DONT play at the pro tour so you can talk about your decks in detail and dont have to worry about giving up some secret tech. Nice enchantment deck, i tried ethereal armor in standard and its so much fun. (little problem: only invisible stalker and geist are good creatures to carry it ;)

Today, I’m going to have a look at how PT Washington D.C. is going to change what Modern looks like post-bannings – some new innovations, some trends that are useful to keep in mind and some tips and tricks on how to approach this format after the PT.

In today's article, I'm going to talk about the deck I chose for GP Milan. There was a ton of stuff I learned about the deck and the format in general. And since Modern remains one of the most important formats, with the next PT being Modern, there's never enough analysis of this interesting environment.

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